Current situation of biofuel production and its enhancement by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome engineering of microbial cells

Publication date: Available online 2 November 2018Source: Microbiological ResearchAuthor(s): Muhammad Rizwan Javed, Muhammad Noman, Muhammad Shahid, Temoor Ahmed, Mohsin Khurshid, Muhammad Hamid Rashid, Muhammad Ismail, Maria Sadaf, Fahad KhanAbstractGeopolitical and economic factors have motivated the scientific community to utilize renewable energy resources. In addition to the modifications in major steps and processes of biofuel production, manipulation of microbial genome engineering tools is essential in order to find sustainable solution of continuous depletion of fossil-fuels. Recently, the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated nuclease 9), a prokaryotic molecular immunity system, has emerged as a novel technology for targeted genomic engineering. This genetic machinery seems to be a groundbreaking discovery to engineer the microbial genomes for desired traits such as enhancing the biofuel tolerance, inhibitor tolerance and thermotolerance as well as modifying the cellulases and hemicelluloses enzymes. In this review, a summary of different generations of biofuels, integrated processes of bioconversion of raw materials into biofuels and role of microbes in biofuel production has been presented. However, the ultimate focus of the review is on major discoveries of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in microorganisms and exploitation of these discoveries for enhanced biofuel production.
Source: Microbiological Research - Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: research